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When I was a child, I had a recurring dream that my parents surprised me with my own fantastic kitchen, built out in the attic. Wierd, wierd child.

I've always appreciated all kinds of food at a very young age (about 3 or 4 yrs) especially tripe, snails, headcheese..I was the only kid in school who had headcheese sandwiches while the other kids had boring bologna sandwiches.. When I was a bit older (9 yrs or so) I wanted to cook & create gourmet dishes...

@emgroff--I can relate to you..

@hungrychristel-I, too, made it a point not to choose any type of profession involving food...I enjoy all the aspects of food (preparing, cooking, eating and appreciating) too much for this to be a "chore" or "job"

One time when I won the bake-off in high school making an Oreo cake that looked like a giant oreo cookie. Another, when I had dinner parties in Jr. High School, also, when my mom asked me to cook Thanksgiving dinner. That was a biggie.

I had always liked to BBQ becasue I watched my dad do it my whole life growing up, but for some reason I never considered it "cooking," it was BBQ.

When I moved out of my parents house and into a little efficiency I was dirt poor and scrambling to make money, I wasnt thinking about cooking. My mom stopped by one day and said she had a little extra money (that didnt happen often) and she took me to whole foods and told me to go nuts.

I remember I bought a big filet of salmon and some potatos and greens, garlic and butter and oil, I went home and cooked something delicious.
If I tried the meal right now I might not think it was so great, but I'd cooked it myself and I felt like an artist doing it, I could add whatever spices I wanted or cook it for as long or as little as I deemed necessary.

I've been cooking and expanding my knowledge of food since.

It took me about 4 years from that point to realize there was actually a huge community of people who enjoyed cooking and creating food and they werent all chefs.

I have been intrigued by cooking since I can remember. As a kindergartner, I always wanted to help me mom bake brownies and banana bread. In 2nd grade, I was up before everyone else making scrambled egg, congee, and pancakes for breakfast. My family got the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook as a gift, and I loved reading all the recipes, trying to make the recipe in my head by following each step. I tried out many of them, even though a lot of it ended up inedible.
When I became vegetarian in 9th grade, I really took on a love of cooking. My mom was against my becoming vegetarian, and would constantly complain that it was a burden to make an extra vegetarian dish. I would look at vegetarian food blogs, read A TON of recipes, and try using new ingredients. I learned to make a lot of different dishes, and became a pretty good baker.
It came into my conscious awareness that I had become a foodie in high school, when most of my time on the internet was spent looking at food blogs, Serious Eats, recipe databases, etc. In hindsight, I guess I was a foodie all along!

it's amazing... but my foodiness started when I STOPPED eating meat. Growing up I was very finicky eater... but when I unconsciously started going vegeterian, I wanted to learn more about all these new things I could eat instead of meat...

the definitive moment for me - when a very experience cook at our yoga center asked me to cook a pasta dish for 20 people because she thought my pastas were always a great hit with the center visitors... i loved the vote of confidence.

when i insisted on being allowed to make the gravy at thanksgiving when i was about ten or eleven, because i KNEW i could do a better job than my aunt, who was lovely, but a terrible cook. i had never made gravy before, but that didn't stop me. and actually, it turned out pretty good!

i always loved fruits and veggies. in school, i was one of those kids who loved being passively contrary. i made spinach my favorite food when i found out no other kids liked it. i liked spending time with my mom (and sister) in the kitchen. when i became a vegetarian and had to make my own food at 12 is pretty much when i made food a hobby.

probably just out of college when I started to make most of my food, but the term "foodie" didn't exist then. I made all my bread, made my flour tortillas for quesadillas. It was a different era, when Foxfire was the name of a series of how to books on Appalachian crafts, rather than an internet browser.

It was also the time when Mastering the Art of French Cooking came out, and I submerged myself in puff pastry skills (I buy it now, and I buy tortillas. But I've started making my bread again)

@lemonfair - She may have had the only headcheese sandwiches but strange and wonderful box lunches prepared by Italian parents have long been the norm.

I had a funny memory of youthful cooking... In high school, I took home economics and concentrated on cooking as I wasn't one for sewing. By the time that class came into my schedule, I was starving (typical teenager). I strong-armed the rest of the students in my cooking group into letting me do all the cooking. I enticed them by saying, "I actually want to eat what we cook and it'll be an instant "A" for the rest of you." LOL.

I trace my foody beginnings back to when I was living in Hong Kong as a child. At the time my mother was a stay-at-home mom with a fabulous talent for cooking, so she would walk down to the local street market every day and buy her ingredients fresh... now and then, she would bring me along and ask me to help her decide what was for dinner. (As creepy as it sounds, after those years in the street markets I have absolutely no fear of eating or preparing meats that are still staring back.)

Occasionally, my father would take us out for dinner -- at nice restaurants or at a local hole-in-the-wall daipaidong, depending on the company and the overall mood. On weekends, we'd raid high-end food stores like Oliver's Delicatessen and CitySuper. Both of these routine experiences really instilled a great love for eating and buying food... though, I didn't realise this until much later in life.

When I moved back to Vancouver as a teenager, I spent hours in the library at the cookbook section. Unfortunately, at the time I was a terrible cook and absolutely convinced that my mother's talent stopped there (also, didn't help that the aunt I was living with at the time would not allow me to cook an adventurous thing in her pristine kitchen). I think it was my subconscious telling me not to give up, hehe. It wasn't until Canadian Thanksgiving one year that I made pumpkin pie at a friend's house -- after that, I knew I'd finally arrived.

I'd say these events happened between age 5 and age 12.

*Great question, Chiff!

Thanks! (Sooo good to get comment notifications, yay!)

I figure people become foodies for so many reasons. You might have wanted to emulate whatever your primary family cook did to make that INCREDIBLE smell go through the house or your parents were such lousy cooks you said, "Later for this - it's obvious I'm going to have to learn to cook or eat that dreck for the rest of my life."

Food was such a central theme in our family it made perfect sense I would follow suit in my passion for cooking. My brother is an equally avid cook. It got me to thinking of events that might have contributed to my interest in it.

My earliest memory of cooking would have to be a conversation I had with my mother when I was about 4 or 5.

I wanted a soft boiled egg. She had no time to make it.

Me: "I'll do it myself." (Bear in mind I could hardly see over the stove top.)
Mom: "You don't know how to cook."
Me: "Yes, I do!"
Mom: "Oh yeah? How long do you boil an egg for soft boiled?"
Me: "Um... An hour?"

She laughed so hard, my answer completely shifted the exchange from an argument to something funny. That really stayed with me.

I think the light came on when I found myself watching three different PBS cooking shows almost simultaneously and realizing there was so much more to the kitchen craft than stuffing something into your face. The three programs were Jeff Smith's Parsons Pantry, Stephan Yan's Wok with Yan and Justin Wilson's Cajun Chef.
I'm sure my penchant for the "why" in the cooking, ethnic cuisine and American Regional all follow a path back to those roots. I was in my late twenties and traded the clean-up chores for the cooking.

I think when I started regularly reading cookbooks on the hour-long drive to school. I had already started cooking for my family, but I wanted to take it to the next level. "Joy of Cooking" was the first book, making the blitzkuchen, and later on I eagerly read "Please to the Table" (a Russian cookbook).

Nowadays, I have a six-foot tall bookshelf overflowing with cookbooks, hand written recipes, website printouts and the like, as well as a husband that loves food as much as I do. It's a good thing. :D

Like others, I can't remember a pivotal event. I've always been captivated by cookbooks and fought with my parents over who got the first crack at the Gourmet magazine when it arrived each month.

I learned how to make my mom's amazing mac and cheese from scratch recipe at about 13. White sauce, mustard powder, mix of cheeses, mostly sharp cheddar, buttered breadcrumbs on top. My sisters and friends would just make Kraft but it wasn't mac and cheese to me.

@cybercita - on a related note (T-Giving)...

My aunt in Jersey was not the best turkey roaster so she used to get turkey from a caterer when she hosted T-Giving. This thing was so overcooked, it turned to sawdust when cut. One year when my mom told me we were to go to that aunt's house for T-Giving I asked if she was getting the turkey from the same place. When my mom said yes, I told her, "Call Aunt Adele and tell her I'm bringing the turkey." I LOVE TURKEY. It's my favorite part of the T-Giving meal!

I roasted two beautiful turkeys (why should we fight over only 2 drumsticks?) and schlepped them to Jersey. I wrapped them in foil, then covered them in dish towels, then in foil again and they rode in the trunk of my car. I mean to tell you they were piping hot and perfectly rested at dinner time - but the aroma wafted through the interior of the car so when my cousin and I reached Jersey, we were STARVING.

This became tradition whenever that particular aunt was hosting T-Giving and I feel like I really bucked the trend because the host ALWAYS provided the turkey and everyone else contributed sides and desserts. In her defense, turkey seemed to be about the only thing Aunt Adele couldn't cook.

I knew as a child, around 8 years old that I wanted to spend more time with food. The first job I dreamed of having was to work in a restaurant. It looked so fun! No astronaut fantasies for me.

My parents all encouraged me to play in the kitchen, even though at first all I accomplished was making a mess. But I improved and would make up menus which I would present to my brothers so they could choose what kind of snack I might have the pleasure of preparing for them.

I also refused to eat any school cafeteria food. I made me sad and I hated it. I went hungry every day and then ran home to prepare some kind of invention for myself to eat.

If you've read Ruth Reichl's description of her mom's cooking - you know what kind of a cook my mother was.....she always cooked fresh and then saved it. As a result, we ate most of it as very tired leftovers. But, my dad's mom was a terrific cook and I watched her and learned true basics. she made stock and pastry and, even though she worked, a good meal as always on the table. I never cooked until I was a bride and learned by experimenting and remembered from watching Gram. I learned to shop carefully and use fresh ingredients. Now, years later, I have a great collection of cookbooks that I read for ideas. In the past few years, I have 'cooked for one" and am accumulating a written record of the things I have developed for small quantity results. I've also gone to a lot of cooking classes, including an appreticeship at a cooking school. I cook a varied selectiion of dishes andI guess that makes me a "foodie' too.